His dream is of an America where his Democratic Party, once the
natural home of Catholics and many other Christian voters, can reclaim the
religious vote and thereby regain its dominance over U.S. politics.

But according to Democratic
pro-lifers like former Boston
mayor Raymond Flynn, Obama’s vision will remain
merely a pipedream if the Democrats persist in marginalizing religiously minded
voters who oppose abortion and same-sex “marriage.”

Sen. Obama
discussed his thoughts about reconciling religious voters and liberal politics
in a June 28 keynote address in Washington
to the annual Call to Renewal convention. Obama told
the gathering of religious progressives that the issue became particularly
personal during his successful 2004 senatorial campaign against Catholic
commentator Alan Keyes.

During the campaign (see ‘Why I Lost,’ page 7), Keyes asserted that Jesus
would not vote for Obama because of his support for
abortion and homosexual “marriage.”

Obama said that while many of his
liberal supporters urged him to ignore Keyes’s jibe, “Mr. Keyes’s implicit
accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me.”

Obama said that after finishing
college, he was drawn towards an African-American church while working as a
community organizer for a coalition of Christian churches.

Eventually, as his faith grew, “I
was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the
Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith.”

Obama said that his religious
conversion is “a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of
Americans.” Such religious convictions are “not something they set apart from
the rest of their beliefs and values,” he said. “In fact, it is often what
drives their beliefs and their values.”

Added Obama,
“And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at —
to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own —
then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.”

‘Rhetorical’ Problem

The Illinois
senator itemized a number of issues, such as combating AIDS, reducing Third World debt, operating daycare and senior facilities
and opposing repeal of the estate tax. He said that political progressives can
make common cause with religious groups.

Obama said that a key problem that
Democrats and progressives experience in wooing religious voters is their
discomfort with religious language.

Said Obama,
“Some of the problem here is rhetorical: if we scrub language of all religious
content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of
Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.”

Obama said that religious
conservatives, for their part, need to acknowledge the benefits of church-state
separation, and “translate their concerns into universal, rather than
religion-specific, values” that can be accepted by others.

And both sides, Obama said, have to maintain a sense of “proportion” about
the importance of the issues they are promoting.

“So we all have some work to do
here,” Obama said. “But I am hopeful that we can
bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this
debate.”

Obama isn’t the only prominent black
Democrat to muse publicly about the question of faith and politics. In a
commentary posted July 20 on CNN.com’s website,
former Democratic presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton
complained that “some high-profile black ministers” are trying to “drive a
wedge” among blacks by opposing abortion and same-sex “marriage.”

Warned Sharpton, “We will not sit idly as these ministers tarnish
Dr. King’s legacy by promoting their small-minded causes to the detriment of
the battles truly worth fighting.”

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne praised Obama’s speech in
a June 30 column. According to Dionne, “it may be the most important
pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy’s Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the
Vatican.”

Former Boston mayor Flynn, a Catholic who also
served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See during the Clinton Administration,
doesn’t share Dionne’s enthusiasm.

“Sometimes liberal Democrats want
to have it both ways,” said Flynn. “They talk like there’s a big tent here in
the Democratic Party. And then the next thing you know, when it’s time for the
political process to begin, they exclude pro-life Democrats like me.”

Flynn said that while Obama’s sentiments seemed sincere, he ducked the key life
and family issues — particularly the Democrats’ overwhelmingly pro-abortion
stance — that drive religious voters away.

“It’s not about rhetoric, it’s about
substance,” Flynn said.

A “radical element” in the
Democratic Party has prevented it from attracting pro-life and pro-family
voters in recent years, Flynn said. He sees Obama’s
speech as an indicator that prominent Democrats are beginning to realize this
is an election-losing situation.

“There’s going to be a new debate
in the Democratic Party in 2008,” Flynn predicted. “There’s no fun in losing
elections all the time.”

Religion Counts

Father Richard John Neuhaus,
editor-in-chief of First Things magazine,
said that Obama’s speech demonstrated that the Illinois senator “is
obviously a thoughtful person.”

Father Neuhaus
is a convert to the faith. In the 1960s, he was a Lutheran pastor of a poor
congregation in a minority area of New
York City. He was active in the Civil Rights Movement
and a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like Flynn, Father Neuhaus believes Democrats must make concrete changes on
moral issues — especially on abortion — if they hope to win a larger share of
the religious vote.

“There’s no easy way of
accommodating the difference on the single most critical question, namely
abortion, between those who believe this is an illegitimate killing of an
innocent human life and those who think it is essentially a matter of choice or
reproductive rights of women, as they put it,” Father Neuhaus
said. “And until that question is addressed in a believable way, there will be
no very believable bridging of the gap.”

Father Neuhaus
said that since 1972, the dominant influences in the Democratic Party have held
a “thoroughly secular” vision of American society. While this secularist
stranglehold remains in control, he said, its grip on the party is weakening.

Said Father Neuhaus,
“When you look at the situation 22 years ago when I wrote The Naked Public Square and the situation now, it’s obvious even
militant secularists are reluctantly coming to recognize that religion and
religiously based morality, whether they want it to or not, will continue to
play a powerful role in our public life.”

Tom McFeely is based

in Victoria, British Columbia.

Alan
Keyes: Why I Lost

WASHINGTON — Many
political pundits believe that Alan Keyes was trounced by Barack
Obama in the 2004 Illinois senatorial race partly because of
Keyes’ passionate pro-life and pro-family campaign pronouncements.

But two years later, Keyes says he
is content to have lost, if that was the price for remaining true to his
religious and political convictions.

Speaking to the Register about his
former political rival’s speech to the Call to Renewal Conference about
reconciling faith and politics, Keyes said he agreed with Sen. Obama about the significance of the topic.

“I obviously believe that there is
almost no more important issue in American political life than the question of
the proper relationship between faith and politics,” said Keyes. “I think it
has to be handled with care and a respect for truth.”

But it’s in the area of truth
where Obama’s ideas fall short, Keyes believes.

“He refuses to take seriously the
challenge of truth,” Keyes said. “If I am going to take the truth seriously,
then I am going to have to apply my faith-based understanding of truth when I
cast my vote and when I act as a participant in society at any level.”

One area where Obama’s
speech departed from the truth is in his comments on the separation of church
and state, Keyes said. In reality, the founders of America’s republican form of
government weren’t at all concerned with keeping politics free from religion,
Keyes noted; the guiding principle of the founding was the protection of
religious freedom.

Said Keyes, “He
talks about the separation of church and state in a way that is not true to
historical facts.”

American Principles

Another major problem with Obama’s speech, Keyes said, is his argument that political
issues must be addressed in a way that can encompass all possible religious
beliefs, and even the beliefs of those with no faith. This conflicts with the
actual basis upon which America
was founded, which involved an explicit recognition of God’s existence and of
the necessity to judge actions according to divinely established standards.

According to Keyes, an American
politician has a fundamental responsibility, when addressing a specific issue,
to apply the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution in a reasonable way.

“If you take those things
seriously, there is no way to justify in light of a reasonable application of
American principles, the positions that are taken by people like Barack Obama on the left with
respect to infanticide, abortion, euthanasia, homosexual ‘marriage.’” Keyes
said. “It can’t be done.”

And as a Christian, he said, an
individual has an even more profound responsibility to bring faith to bear in
every area of life, including politics.

“This is the challenge I have,
which I don’t think Barack Obama
takes seriously,” Keyes said. “And that is the challenge of living as a
Christian person in truth, where you don’t use some excuse that separates
action from faith.”

Keyes, a Catholic, admits that in
the current cultural climate, speaking out about Christian convictions on moral
issues can mean that a candidate is likely to lose out politically.

Added Keyes, “And that’s part of
the problem I sense with Obama’s speech. Even if it’s
coming, as I hope it is, from a heart that is sincerely searching for a
Christian walk, that Christian walk will require that you confront what may be
the fundamental opposition between the price of victory in corrupt times and
the discipline of the truth. And he nowhere takes this seriously.”